Paul Collingwood, dropped for Sunday's first ODI against Australia, is still expected to make England's World Cup squad. Photograph: Tom Shaw/Getty Images

Writing off Paul Collingwood, as with Mark Twain, can be fraught with dangers. Even when the writing is on the wall, this most singular of cricketers is likely to dismiss it as graffiti.

Since his strongest suit – apart from his fielding – is his character, his unyielding qualities, he is probably the only man in cricket who doesn't realise that his international career is almost over, given that he is expected to be named in England's World Cup squad, which will be announced on Wednesday.

Nor should it be forgotten that he is not only a member of England's Twenty20 team but its winning captain to boot. So there is time yet for the Brigadier of Block to go out with his head held high. But having been forced into Test retirement earlier this month (his 83 runs in five matches at 13.83 in the Ashes followed his 119 in four matches at 19.83 against Pakistan) he was dropped from the one-day side in Melbourne yesterday.

There have been other times when he has not made the ODI team. He has been injured or ill, suspended and occasionally rested, but this was the first time he had been dropped for eight years, after scoring just one fifty in 15 matches.

Ajmal Shahzad, who is at the opposite end of his England career, is convinced he will be back. He said today: "He's a grown boy and a hardy character. He won't take this too badly and will want to come back and show everyone what he has to offer.

"That's what he's about. Even being in the field yesterday when he came on for Swanny, he was buzzing about and fizzing the ball around. He's that kind of character and will bounce back from this."

But for some time now the figures have been stacking against Collingwood. England missed few tricks in the Ashes series but they may have missed one when, for the past two Tests, they didn't move the fluent Ian Bell up to five in the batting order and drop Collingwood to six. At five, it is easier to play a match-winning innings, something that was beyond Collingwood but well within Bell's range, for as a cricketer the younger man has stepped out of his adolescence and is a man at last. Not that Collingwood will ever be associated with match-winning innings. The knock that defined him, perhaps more than any other, was his 74 in Cardiff to save the Ashes Test in 2009, which enabled England to win the series.

In a sense, he belonged more to English cricket's recent age of austerity, with its accent on resilience and defiance, than in the aggressive and successful present. It was in 2001 that Nasser Hussain brought him into England's ODI team. "We were getting hammered by Australia and Pakistan and he was getting some abuse from Matthew Hayden in the slips. He just turned round and said, in that Mackem accent of his: 'Fuck off, Buzz Lightyear.'

"The Aussies took note, because they like someone who gives a bit back, and Steve Waugh said that he was made of the right stuff. We took note too. At the time in English cricket, his refusal to back down was just what we needed."

Even when he scored runs, Collingwood looked ugly. When he didn't, he looked awful, and he has spent a lot of time this winter looking awful. With his front foot pawing the popping crease, he has appeared strangely hesitant for a man who has played 292 times for England – including a record 189 ODIs.

Just as he closes the face of his bat he will close his face to the idea that it is all over now. But even if he plays in next month's World Cup it is likely to be the last hurrah for one of England's great team players, a cricketer who may have failed to capture the imagination of the public but one with whom a succession of captains and coaches refused to do without.